Skip to main content
Dessert

Veal-suet Pudding

A pudding made by soaking bread in milk, then layering with currants, veal suet, and eggs, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal-suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices.

  2. Boil and sweeten the milk, then pour it over the bread slices.

Make the custard

  1. Once soaked, pour out a little milk and mix it with the beaten eggs and grated nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the soaked bread in a buttered dish with layers of currants and shredded veal suet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) or boil in a basin if preferred.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread into a set custard as they cook.
Veal suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist as it cooks.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk to hold its shape.
New milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and sets with the eggs.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit through the layers.

The step that matters

Pour out a little milk before mixing with the eggs. Adding the eggs to very hot milk can scramble them, so the custard may curdle instead of setting smoothly. Pouring out a portion first and letting it cool slightly helps keep the eggs smooth.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, veal, butter):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, veal, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes